The present application relates to computing, and more specifically to software, User Interfaces (UIs), methods, and accompanying systems for retrieving, arranging, and/or displaying data from a database.
Methods for arranging or displaying data from databases are employed in various demanding applications, including systems for facilitating scientific, educational, and enterprise data analysis. Such applications often demand user-friendly efficient systems that facilitate rapid, timely, and pertinent mechanisms for facilitating data analysis by an end user.
Systems facilitating rapid and insightful end user data analysis are particularly important in enterprise-computing environments and accompanying software systems, which may include thousands of client devices communicating in real time with a cloud-based database to access and/or modify data and/or functionality thereof, and where timely construction of insightful analytics by end users (e.g., enterprise employees) may facilitate informed decision-making throughout the enterprise.
Example enterprise systems include Business Intelligence (BI), Performance Management (PM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Human Capital Management (HCM), other Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, and so on. Such systems may communicate with one or more databases to gather and present information to enterprise personnel, e.g., via one or more web pages or other application Uls. The pages may present data pertaining to one or more enterprise transactions. The pages often include one or more substantially static developer-created reports and accompanying data visualizations related to the transactions.
Conventionally, end users of such systems lack sufficient technical knowledge to develop custom or personalized on-demand reports. Generally, a developer, technician, or administrator with specialized skills creates reports in response to end user requests. However, such report-creation processes can be slow and costly, and the administrators may lack full awareness of sought report features. Accordingly, such systems generally lack effective features for enabling rapid or real-time generation and customization of the reports that can account for rapidly changing enterprise data analysis needs.
Furthermore, large enterprises, which may include thousands of employees, may accumulate many disparate analytic reports created by different contracted developers, which may not uniformly conform to enterprise data security policies. Accordingly, use of such conventional report-creation methods and systems generally do not afford consistent and uniform multi-layered security features, thereby potentially reducing enterprise control over data security.
In addition, the developer-created reports are often complex and lack a consistent framework or methodology, such that end-users must often relearn how the user interface used to display the report operates for each new report that is accessed and viewed. This can be time consuming and costly, potentially reducing the ability of enterprise personnel to rapidly make important informed business decisions.